­­­­What can be done if Warcraft III is slow

The game may run faster for you if you configure Wacraft III to use OpenGL instead of DirectX.
To default the game to use OpenGL, see the registry import below. This creates
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Warcraft III with new DWORD value called "Gfx OpenGL" with the value set to 1. So you may create a file using the text, or use regedit to do the same.

The game might run faster in windowed mode. To do this, launch with the parameter -window. It has been reported that it works well on older Intel integrated cards.

Players can't join my Battle.net games, what is wrong?

There are two causes for this problem:

You don't have a Wine Version with the applied AcceptEx patch (See Battle.net instructions above).

A firewall or router blocks the connections attempts. Make sure you have the correct ports open. Open outbound and inbound, TCP and UDP, port 6112, or whatever you set in the game configuration. More Network Ports

How to fix problems related to the Local Area Network option?

If you try to play using the Local Area Network option, and do not see a game hosted from your machine on another or vice versa, and you are in the same subnet, this is likely caused by not having a default gateway. The game relies on sending UDP packets to the broadcast address and Linux will not send them unless there is a default gateway or another rule to handle them. To fix it, there are two methods:

See Wine Traffic #62 for another description of the issue. This is not considered a bug.

­How to fix cursor/mouse problem in windowed mode?

When running windowed, if you move the cursor out of the screen and back again, sometimes it stays as the scrolling cursor and not the pointer cursor. Hover the mouse over a unit or building to fix the cursor. This is an oversight in the game itself and not a bug in Wine. Use mouse grab or full screen mode to bypass this problem. You may also disable automatic scrolling and use the middle mouse button or the directional keys (non-keypad) for manual scrolling.

­­­Last updated :
2011-03-19

WARNING - Crash with ATI cards

Several users with ATI Radeon video cards encounter problems when playing. If run in Direct3D mode (e.g. without -opengl switch or registry hack) Warcraft 3 doesn't even start up. If run in OpenGL mode, the console prints these error messages

and the game is extremely slow with corrupted graphics because it uses the MESA Software OpenGL implementation instead of the 3D hardware acceleration of the ATI card.

If you encounter the same problem, have a solution to it or ATI, Wine and WC3 are running fine for you, please describe it in this bug report:

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13335

How to disable window manager's alt key combo

Window managers often have the alt key bound to certain features,
especially the alt-click. THIS IS NOT A WINE BUG. If you have problems
with the alt key in any way DO NOT REPORT IT. Fix your window manager.
I'm not going to list steps for every one because there are too many
possibilites. Figure out yourself or ask in a help forum (here is
okay... but be warned all I use is TWM). If you are desperate, turn off
window manager managed windows in winecfg.

KDE

Go into KDE Control Center, expand Desktop, click window behavior, then
click window actions tab. You can turn off the alt-combos. If you want
to make window specific settings, click on window specific settings
under window behavior on the side.

GNOME

The option to change the key binding is in System Menu -> Preferences Menu -> Windows.

How to play without CD?

Connect to battle.net to upgrade to the latest version of Warcraft 3 which doesn't need a CD.

If you ever get "Please insert disc", this is NOT a problem with detecting the CD.
The protection system is probably still built into the game even though the CD check itself is
disabled. Make sure you use version 1.21b or later. If you get this problem after having
this version installed, you are likely suffering from a buggy video driver as this is the
only known (and proven possible) cause at this point.

DO NOT USE NOCD PATCHES - They are pointless, and won't fix the real problem.

Skip the intro videos

Method 1: Rename the videos

After installing the game, its highly recommended that you browse to
your Warcraft III folder and rename the movies folder. Many people crash
from the movies because of buggy sound drivers, or simply hang, so you
should do this in case you are one of them. You can still play the
movies under
mplayer (or xine if you so choose)! TutorialIn.mpq is the very first
cinematic of the game, and for the rest; *Op.mpq is the cinematic at the
start of the campaign and *Ed.mpq is the cinematic and the end. If you
wanted to follow the story, it's not hard at all to play the ones
corresponding where you are at.

Method 2: Mark the intro as seen

If you don't want to play the campaign, but only want to start
Warcraft III without a crash while playing the intro then you can simply
mark the intro as seen:

Open reedit:

$ wine regedit

Navigate in regedit to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Blizzard/Warcraft III/

Create a key (folder) Misc in the Warcraft III key. You can do so by right clicking the key.

Create a DWORD value seenintromovie with the value 0x1

­

Old user-submitted tips

2015-01-15 Admin note: the suggestions below have been extracted from old user comments, and may not be relevant to current Wine.

If game crash at start, you should try to set "winegstreamer" to disabled in winecfg, in DLL overrides menu.

If you have a problem with screen resolution or moving mouse, you should try "emulated desktop" in winecfg in graphic tab

I was able to get my W3 install going using the following command in terminal (within program directory):
setarch i386 -3 -L -B -R wine "Warcraft 3.exe" -opengl

accompanied by a CD Drive Error requesting that I ensure my CD is in the drive (which doesn't help).

I've tried installing the digital client from Blizzard, which also fails to run (not sure how to force this to go through Wine).

I did notice the new digital download installation includes new packages, including a DirectX setup which states DirectX 9.0c, which fails to install as it is not compatible with the version of Windows currently installed.

RE: new patch 1.27 breaks this app by Flatcap_Monty on Sunday March 20th 2016, 12:23

I was getting this after a fresh install (news of the patch and discussions about the game at work made me want to play it again). After failing to get it running via CD, I gave downloading from the Blizzard website a go, and it works like a charm. Version 1.27a and no problems as yet, online or offline.